[jimbokun]

"The mathematical emphasis didn't seem to lead naturally to higher level programming techniques involving modularity or abstraction beyond the functional level."

Before you can apply modularity or abstraction, you need some code you can modularize or abstract.

Project Euler gives people the opportunity to write code that does something. Before someone writes code that does something, any talk of how to organize code will be meaningless.

If you look at the points of emphasis in the AP curriculum in the article, they jump immediately to the code organization phase, before students have successfully solved some simple problems with code. Some number of Project Euler problems should be a prerequisite before techniques for organizing code are even mentioned.

[sliverstorm]

Put another way;

If the student still can't remember that basic C programs usually start with

int main(int argv, char *argv[]) {

Or what

return TRUE;

does, how do you expect him to go about understanding data structures, search algorithms, OOP?

[jschrf]

I think you mean "int argc" ;-)

[sliverstorm]

Yup, I noticed that typo after the edit window expired!